Creep (2004): Collector's Edition (Australian Import)

Kate (Franka Potente, from Run Lola Run) falls asleep waiting for the last train and wakes up to a world of horror waiting for her. London’s underground railway station is locked tight and there’s no way in or out. As she makes her way around the creepy place, she discovers that she’s not alone, and a terrifying creature is stalking her.

There’s something about subway stations after hours that is so understatedly "creepy." I’m not sure what it is. Perhaps because we’re so used to seeing them buzzing with activity, bodies moving to and fro at such a speed, trains coming in, departing, people jumping on and off, that when we see them devoid of that life, they look like a glimpse into a world without life.

The titular creep is a mutated freak, pale and thin in frame, with batlike features from its time underground. Creep was released the year before The Descent and I would be damn surprised if the creep’s creature design hadn’t inspired the cave-dwelling beasties from The Descent (at least in part). Wisely, the film makes no attempt to explain the origins of the monster. It just is, which is infinitely more terrifying. The creep is played by Sean Harris under a thick layer of costuming makeup, long before he would appear in much more high-profile A-list blockbusters. 

Kate is the most prominent character, with Franka Potente effortlessly (or at least seemingly effortlessly, the pros always make it look easy) carrying the entire picture on her shoulders, but she does run into other characters in the deserted world of the underground tube station. A pair of homeless, runaway teens take her through the maze of these tunnels and work as our introduction to a population of people who live down there, in our everyday, real world. 

Creep is a good movie. It’s solid and creepy and moves along at a speed, never stopping for too long, other than to allow the audience to catch its breath before throwing the next dangerous twist in the plot at them. Christopher Smith also directed the mind-bending thriller Triangle and while Creep isn’t quite as good, it does give us a glimpse into the talent he had and would eventually refine and fine-tune. 

One of my favorite scenes in horror movie history is the tube station scene in An American Werewolf in London. This is where a victim is stalked by the howling beast, but the creature is wisely kept mostly offscreen. In the audio commentary, Smith shares a similar love for that sequence and says he tried to imagine an entire film which was just that one scene, expanded to feature-length. While Creep isn’t my favorite Christopher Smith movie, it’s a solid outing, with genuine thrills and some expertly designed setpieces built on sheer dread and tension. Movies like this are perfect to put on, kill the lights, and allow yourself to be manipulated by a confident storyteller. It’s a little predictable, it’s a little derivative, but that’s all part of its fun.  

Vital Disc Stats: The Blu-ray

Umbrella’s Blu-ray release of Creep comes in both a standard edition and a collector’s edition. Both versions include the film in a single-disc release with a removable slipcover containing newly commissioned artwork by Mutant Design. The collector’s edition includes a custom rigid case, a 48-page booklet, 8 art cards, and an A3 reversible poster.

Creep was filmed in 2004 and it was a wise choice, at the time, to shoot on 35mm film. Given technological limitations of video-shot cinematography at the time (and even now, to a certain extent), I couldn’t imagine the gorgeous nighttime, lowlight interiors looking as incredible as they do here had they not been shot on film. This is a movie with a love for shadows, a love for what lurks in them, and cloaks so much of its mystery within them. The 1080p High-Definition video presentation is razor sharp, with nice contrast separating actors from the environment, but if I have one minor complaint, it’s with a general aesthetical look of most films of this era. I’m not a big fan of early-00s color palettes that have an overzealous hand on their post-production color correction. This minor gripe and purely personal nitpick aside, Creep looks amazing and this is a great transfer.

Viewers have two options to choose from: A 5.1 surround option and a 2.0 option, both encoded in DTS-HD MA. For the purpose of this review, I did toggle back and forth between both and they both present their own strengths and weaknesses. The stereo option packs a wallop. It’s nice and loud and hits and screeches and booms in all the right places. The 5.1 surround option is brilliantly designed, with terrific usage of the rear speakers for certain jumpscares and general atmospheric activity throughout (echoing voices carrying throughout the tunnels, offscreen monstrous screams, etc.). The biggest issue I had with the surround option is that the front of the soundstage feels a bit throttled. It never gets as loud as it should. When the action starts, the volume decreases, almost as though there’s a dynamic range compression employed on the front three channels. And it’s a shame because movies like this benefit from the variance between its quieter and louder moments. With both options, however, dialogue clarity is never an issue, it’s always clearly favored above the action and the score.

Creep has more special features and supplements anyone could reasonably hope for. Both legacy features and featurettes, and new interviews collected specifically for this release, there are hours of information on this film's production and legacy to wade through. One of the best features is gameplay from a video-game tie-in called "The Last Tube" that was thought to have been lost.

• Audio Commentary - Director Christopher Smith
• 2024 Interview With Director Christopher Smith (HD 12:49)
• 2024 Interview With Producer Julie Baines (HD 13:37)
• Mind the Gap: A History of Biritsh Locomotive Horror (HD 24:24) - A visual Essay by Jarret Gahan
• Creep 3D (SD 15:36) - The Last Tube game walk-thru
• Archival Interviews With Cast and Crew (SD 15:56)
• The Making of Creep (SD 35:41)
• Production Design: The Look of Creep (SD 11:04)
• Makeup: Making the Creep (SD 10:43)
• Frightfest 2004 (SD 11:38) - Press Conference Q&A
• Operation Deleted Scene (SD 2:23)
• Storyboards
• Trailer

Creep is a good time at the movies, atmospheric and creepy, with an incredible sense of dread, but also of fun. It’s an old-fashioned creature feature, anchored by a wonderful performance by the great Franka Potente. Christopher Smith has made better movies since, but Creep is a hell of a feature-length debut. Umbrella’s release, in both standard and collector’s editions, boasts great video quality, a wealth of features and a MOSTLY great surround sound mix that has some issues with dynamic range compression. All in all, Umbrella’s Blu-ray release is Worth A Look.